To Be A Warrior

Chapter 21: Castle's Burning

"Okay, Five," Maxine breathes out slowly, eyeing the dead thing on the floor. "Recap. We're stuck in a castle, trying to evacuate a bunch of teenagers and young adults, and surrounded by zombies that might not be actually zombies. Whatever just attacked is definitely dead. It had yellow eyes and distended veins all over its body. Ghoulish. What is it?"

"It was with the V-Types in Battenbury," I reply, swallowing thickly. "Whatever it is, it has something to do with them."

"Dr. Meyers, are you..." Janine's voice crackles in, and Maxine desperately grabs the mic of her headset and pulls it closer to her mouth.

"Janine, can you hear me? Five and I are still in the mayor's office with some kind of creature. I killed it, but from the look of what's left, it's not a V-Type, but it's not a regular zom either." She pauses for a reply but gets nothing but static on the other end. "Janine? Janine?"

"Signal is shit here," I grumble. "We need to get to the wall and tell her about this. If we can kill some of them..."

She nods. "Yeah. Grab that memory stick. It's showing 100% downloaded." We both tense when we hear growls coming from the outside window. "That thing must have friends coming this way."

I peer out the window after grabbing the memory stick. I squint, watching for shadows in the darkness. "I don't see anything, but they sound close. Best we not stick around."

"We don't have time to anyway. We have to tell Janine about these-these things! Come on!"

We leave the mayor's office, heading down the stone corridors to get to the outside and back to the wall. Each step against the cool stone floor is like the sound of a steady beating drum. I'm hyperaware of each breath, each step, each beat of my pounding heart. I take a turn, the gray stones of the wall blending together.

I keep waiting to hear moans from the zombie-creatures behind us. I keep expecting them to come barreling out of a room to charge after us, crawling on all fours with their yellow eyes and veins. I shudder.

I wish I had studied them more in Battenbury. I wish I had put more thought into finding out why they looked different. What made them different there? What makes them different here? What the hell are we dealing with?

I turn another corner, just barely glancing to Maxine and noticing the slight pucker in her brow. I chalk it up to her thinking the same thing I am. I was lucky she was there to stab that zombie in the eye, or I would have been done for. Its skull was harder than rock. I mean, hell, I've punched through metal with my bare hands and yet I couldn't crack that thing with a metal tong!

How is everything else decayed but the skull was as tough as it was? That has to have something to do with whatever they are.

My pace slows to a stop when I see the hallways split up ahead, and I blink. I don't remember having to split down a hallway the last time the mayor led us out of here.

"Uh, Max?" I ask, looking back at her, and she chews on her lip, looking just as conflicted.

A soft curse leaves my mouth in realization, anger and irritation bubbling under my skin. We don't have time for this!

I wince when static comes through my headset.

"Five, we need you to be-" Janine's voice is swallowed by static, and I curse again.

"We're coming to get you, Janine!" Maxine yells. "But the coms are borked. Damn this valley! I think we took a wrong turn back there, Five. All these stone corridors look the same."

She pauses, eyes focusing on one of the nearby doors when the snarl of those monsters hit the air, along with the characteristic moans of zombies. I'm unsure if I should be grateful that regular zoms are a part of this. There's no echo against the walls, meaning it's not coming from any nearby passageway.